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Discovery Crater Eruption of 2021
From June 16 to October 27, 2021, a large eruption took place in the Kettle Moraine in Southeastern Wisconsin. The eruption released 14 km of ash and 10 km of lava over the course of that period. The eruption created a new volcano, a small caldera that is now known as Discovery Crater. Since the eruption and the few other eruptions that came after it, Hidden Volcanoes National Park was made as the newest National Park and the first national park in Wisconsin. Discovery Crater Discovery Crater is a fictional active Wisconsinite caldera complex located in the Unstein Rifting Plain between Cheeseville and Newburg, Wisconsin. The caldera is rather small, with a diameter of 2,197 feet and 300 feet deep as of 2023, making it one of the smallest active volcanoes on Earth. Ridges around the crater rim rise the volcano to about 20 feet at the highest. As for the depth, the volcano has waxed and waned since its creation, from 300 feet to 200 feet to 330 feet, before bouncing back up to 300 feet. Discovery Crater exists on the Unstein Rifting Plain, an area where rift and faults appear continuously. Discovery Crater is the first volcano to form from one of these rifts, since the next volcano to appear, Mold Mountain, would appear on the smaller Syriak Plain 4 years later. Due to the amount of natural fracking underneath Discovery Crater and its rift (Theodore Rift Complex), three rift zones have formed around the volcano. Only one of these rift zones actually had an eruptive vent, Simple Cone, which erupted for only two months between March and May of 2023. Name Discovery Crater was named by Leonard Batke, a professor at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee (UWM). It was named for the fact that three major discoveries were made because of the volcano. One, volcanoes can form in Wisconsin. Two, it showed a volcanic rock that was never recorded before. Lastly, it showed why this place is so unique compared to other volcanoes. Geology Discovery Crater is one of the most geologically diverse volcanoes ever discovered. The volcano is mostly made of Wisconsinite, a rare volcanic rock only found in Wisconsin. The rock is ultramafic, meaning it is poor in silicates but high in magnesium and iron in its purest form, as if coming out of the mantle itself. The rock has a special crystal formation within it called Ribinite, which is highly manipulative to heat and pressure, allowing the magma to change composition and viscosity very quickly. Because of this, Discovery Crater has had both eruptions of ash and lava, sometimes transferring from one eruptive phase to another in a very short period of time. After a major eruption has ended, another, smaller eruption will sometimes take place after it, where special magma consisting of Wisconsin Carbonatite or Wisconsin Phonolite will begin to erupt from the volcano, depending on the Wisconsinite composition. This type of volcanic rock makes it very difficult to predict, as no one knows what type of eruption it will be until it has already begun. Thus, according to some scientists, Discovery Crater might be the most dangerous and most interesting volcano in the whole United States. Eruption *March - April 2021: Seismic anomalies are felt all across Southeast and Central Wisconsin, as well as Northern Illinois and Indiana. The quakes are very unusual, as they don't have a certain rhythm. Later, they find that some areas have gained a lot of concentration. One of these is Washington County, where seismicity is reaching M4.5 - 5.1, and shows no signs of slowing. *May 21 - June 13 2021: After a short period of inactivity, the earthquake swarms continue again, this time not growing in magnitude at all, staying at a range of M4.5 and 5.0, and continuing. Some scientists realized it was because magma was fracking the bedrock underneath, forming the rifts and faults we see today. *June 16 - June 22 2021: At 2:30 PM on June 16, 2021, the shaking suddenly stops. At 2:35, a new large earthquake strikes the region. It was caused by a huge collapse, as nearly 2,300 tons of buildings, soil, and bedrock are swallowed into the 350 foot deep hole. For the first time in 200 years, Ash and volcanic bombs explode out of Wisconsin soil. Due to the Surtseyan eruption and the evolution to a fine-grained ash plume, scientists believe it was caused by rising magma coming into contact with an underground aquifer, causing it to explode out so violently. The initial eruption lasts 6 days, and releases large amounts of fine ash into the air. Soon, the eruption began to calm into a small fumarole at the bottom of the crater, before completely ending on June 22 at around 5:00 AM. *June 25 - July 5, 2021: After a long period of slight tremors, at close to midnight on June 25, parts of the crater rim opened up, forming long fissures, where lava of various compositions began to erupt. it started on the south end of the caldera, where aa flows began to steamroll homes from 3 miles away. Then, more of the caldera continued along the east, north, and a small portion of the west rim, which had much more runny pahoehoe flows, which traveled five miles, but destroyed only one house. These formed the Cardinal Ridges. At one point, there was a lava fountain 250 feet high located on the west rim, which only lasted for 2 days. While some of the lava oozed outside of the crater, most of it went inside the crater, where it formed a large lava lake that shallowed the crater by 53 feet. By July, the activity began to cease, ending with a large ash plume, creating a caldera inside the crater that drained the lava lake. The eruption officially ended on July 5 at 2:33 PM. Not to long after the end of the end of the eruption, scientists found out that the amount of Ribinite in the lava equals how durable the lava rock is when cooled. Since there was more Ribinite, most of it was crushed and graded by the Black Stone Mill company, which was either sold as gravel, or left to regain farmland, as the rock turned out to be very fertile. Also, the ridges began to collapse into the crater, leaving nothing but flat plateaus of lava in there place. *July 13 - August 3, 2021, after another lull of activity, a very odd eruption took place. At the base of the crater, where the rift cuts through, a vent opens up, releasing large volcanic bombs and, strangely, large amounts of carbon and methane gas in the form of steam into the air. the small bombs, now known as "laacs", began to erupt out of the growing vent, forming a group of cones that rose up to 40 feet high. When it was safe enough to get close, scientists began catching some of the laacs from inside the crater. They found that this was some kind of special Phonolite, one of the rarest volcanic rocks in the world. Further research showed that the green mossy tint the rocks had was due to large amounts of Ribinite, explaining why it was so light and brittle. Not only that, but they also found many precious elements inside the lava, one of which was diamonds. This is understandable, as they erupted with carbon gas, and that it originated under large amounts of heat and pressure. The eruptions were similar to the chemical reaction of Ammonium Dichromate, which erupts and grows like an actual volcano. Not long after the discovery of diamonds, the phonolite eruptions ended, and were replaced by Wisconsin basaltic-andesite flows, which formed in the crater. Some of the lava destroyed parts of the volcanoes. However, on August 3 at around 1 PM, the cones were destroyed by a large ash eruption, consisting of Wisconsinite and Wisconsin Phonolite, which still had diamonds in it. the eruption lasted for only four hours, ending at around 5:36 PM. *August 18 - September 10, 2021: A long lull of volcanic activity had taken place, taking place from August 3 to August 15. Early on August 16, a large earthquake swarm had taken place, this time affecting the entire Theodore Rift, ranging from M4s to 5s. Suddenly, the earthquakes stopped again. Just like in the first eruption of Discovery Crater, another large earthquake (M4.6) rocked the crater as a small collapse formed on the inside of the crater, in the same caldera that was formed from the ash plume on August 3. The ash plume was small, and it was clearly seen that it was a sinkhole-like collapse that formed. Another group of deep earthquakes occurred. Then, on August 21, scientists saw something incredible. The pit crater formed from the ash plume was now bubbling with lava. It was 67 feet across and went to a depth of 186 feet. It was Wisconsin's first lava lake. The lake continued to grow as it stabilized, growing to a new diameter of 130 feet. Lava continued to issue from the lake, forming border walls, or levees, 40 feet high in order to contain the lava. On August 30, another large earthquake struck the crater rim. At first, the small tremors were bizarre, questioning the scientists, who believed it to be another large rim eruption. After 3 hours of these strange earthquakes, at 11:45 PM, lava erupted from small cracks in old vents around the crater perimeter. When scientists arrived on the morning of September 1, they were amazed. Large white pillar-like structures were seen standing 20 - 30 feet high around the crater rim. The lava that poured from them was cold, at only 650 degrees F, and did not glow like other lavas. The lava was silver and black in color, and came out more fluid than water. Scientists realized this was rare carbonatite lava, which before had only erupted from the Ol Doinyo Lengai volcano in Tanzania. However, they learned that it was actually Wisconsin Carbonatite, due to the Ribinite crystals and pieces of Wisconsinite rock found within it. In the beginning, there were dozens of them located around the crater rim. However, most of the vents died out, leaving only five of these vents left. *September 30 - October 1, 2021: The lava lake and White Castle Cones (carbonatite vents) were erupting for 20 days, making it one of the longest eruptions at the time. Then, on September 30, 2021, the lava lake suddenly grew a hard crust over itself, confusing scientists all over the world. The White Castle Cones also had a change, as their activity began to decrease until completely stopping over a course of 3 hours. Suddenly, at 4:37 PM, the lava lake exploded, creating a massive ash eruption. When the lava lake erupted, the White Castle Cones also grew from no activity to high in a matter of seconds, possibly due to a release of pressure. The ash eruption lasted for two days, and was recorded as a VEI 5 eruption, the largest eruption Discovery Crater ever had excluding its first eruption. Soon, the ash erupting began to slow, allowing scientists to see that the lava lake crater had grown to 166 feet in diameter and 200 feet deep. The White Castle Cones, now depleted to 20 foot high craters, also began to slow, returning back to their original activity. By October 1, 500 homes were damaged by the eruption and one airliner had to make an emergency landing due to ash melting the turbine engine. The total cost in damages was 66 million dollars, the second costliest eruption in Discovery Crater. Scientists believe it happened due to a fast change of Ribinite morphology within the magma chamber, changing most of the Vandaline Ribinite to the much more durable Muspeline Ribinite, which is what caused the blowout eruption in the lava lake. *October 27, 2021 - Present: 26 days after the large eruption, earthquakes were being sighted in Discovery Crater. The earthquakes were small, but all were harmonic, meaning magma is moving to the surface. Scientists feared another large eruption was possible, so they evacuated everyone within a 3 mile radius of the volcano. Earlier in the month, the White Castle Cones had reached a point of complete inactivity after a slow decrease of activity. On October 27, the White Castle Cones rejuvenated itself, returning back to its previous normal activity over another slow buildup of activity. On November 3, 2021, a new lava lake formed in the previously dead lava lake crater. The size of the lava lake did not change, but it rose 40 feet off of the surrounding flat crater basin due to levee formation. The eruption still is continuing as of 2023, and shows no signs of slowing.